BEHAVIOR
If I only knew how to teach English, I'd have far more confidence in
my schoolmastering. But I don't seem to get on. The system breaks
down too often to suit me. Just when I think I have some lad
inoculated with elegant English through the process of reading from
some classic, he says, "might of came," and I become obfuscated
again. I have a book here in which I read that it is the business of
the teacher so to organize the activities of the school that they
will function in behavior. Well, my boys' behavior in the use of
English indicates that I haven't organized the activities of my
English class very effectively. I seem to be more of a success in a
cherry-orchard than in an English class. My cherries are large and
round, a joy to the eye and delightful to the taste. The fruit
expert tells me they are perfect, and so I feel that I organized the
activities in that orchard efficiently. In fact, the behavior of my
cherry-trees is most gratifying. But when I hear my pupils talk or
read their essays, and find a deal of imperfect fruit in the way of
solecisms and misspelled words, I feel inclined to discredit my skill
in organizing the activities in this human orchard.
I think my trouble is (and it is trouble), that I proceed upon the
agreeable assumption that my pupils can "catch" English as they do
the measles if only they are exposed to it. So I expose them to the
objective complement and the compellative, and then stand aghast at
their behavior when they make all the mistakes that can possibly be
made in using a given number of words. I have occasion to wonder
whether I juggle these big words merely because I happen to see them
in a book, or whether I am trying to be impressive. I recall how
often I have felt a thrill of pride as I have ladled out deliberative
subjunctives, ethical datives, and hysteron proteron to my
(supposedly) admiring Latin pupils. If I were a soldier I should
want to wear one of those enormous three-story military hats to
render me tall and impressive. I have no desire to see a drum-major
minus his plumage. The disillusionment would probably be depressing.
Liking to wear my shako, I must continue to talk of objective
complements instead of using simple English.
I had watched men make a hundred barrels, but when I tried my skill I
didn't produce much of a barrel. Then I knew making barrels is not
violently infectious. But I suspect that it is quite the same as
English in this respect. My behavior in that cooper-shop, for a
time, was quite destructive of materials, until I had acquired skill
by much practice.
If I could only organize the activities in my English class so that
they would function in such behavior as Lincoln's "Letter to Mrs.
Bixby," I should feel that I might continue my teaching instead of
devoting all my time to my cherry-orchard. Or, if I could see that
my pupils were acquiring the habit of correct English as the result
of my work, I'd give myself a higher grade as a schoolmaster. My
neighbor over here teaches agriculture, and one of his boys produced
one hundred and fifty bushels of corn on an acre of ground. That's
what I call excellent behavior, and that schoolmaster certainly knows
how to organize the activities of his class. My boy's yield of
thirty-seven bushels, mostly nubbins, does not compare favorably with
the yield of his boy, and I feel that I ought to reform, or else wear
a mask. Here is my boy saying "might of came," and his boy is
raising a hundred and fifty bushels of corn per acre.
If I could only assemble all my boys and girls twenty years hence and
have them give an account of themselves for all the years after they
left school, I could grade them with greater accuracy than I can
possibly do now. Of course, I'd simply grade them on behavior, and
if I could muster up courage, I might ask them to grade mine. I
wonder how I'd feel if I'd find among them such folks as Edison,
Burbank, Goethals, Clara Barton, and Frances Willard. My neighbor
John says the most humiliating experience that a man can have is to
wear a pair of his son's trousers that have been cut down to fit him.
I might have some such feelings as that in the presence of pupils who
had made such notable achievements. But, should they tell me that
these achievements were due, in some good measure, to the work of the
school, well, that would be glory enough for me. One of my boys was
telling me only yesterday of a bit of work he did the day before in
the way of revealing a process in chemistry to a firm of jewellers
and hearing the superintendent say that that bit of information is
worth a thousand dollars to the establishment. If he keeps on doing
things like that I shall grade his behavior one of these days.
I suppose Mr. Goethals must have learned the multiplication table,
once upon a time, and used it, too, in constructing the Panama Canal.
He certainly made it effective, and the activities of that class in
arithmetic certainly did function. I tell my boys that this
multiplication table is the same one that Mr. Goethals has been using
all the while, and then ask them what use they expect to make of it.
One man made use of this table in tunnelling the Alps, and another in
building the Brooklyn Bridge, and it seems to be good for many more
bridges and tunnels if I can only organize the activities aright.
I was standing in front of St. Marks, there in Venice, one morning,
regaling myself with the beauty of the festive scene, and talking to
a friend, when four of my boys came strolling up, and they seemed
more my boys than ever before. What a reunion we had! The folks all
about us didn't understand it in the least, but we did, and that was
enough. I forgot my coarse clothes, my well-nigh empty pockets, my
inability to buy the many beautiful things that kept tantalizing me,
and the meagreness of my salary. These were all swallowed up in the
joy of seeing the boys, and I wanted to proclaim to all and sundry;
"These are my jewels." Those boys are noble, clean, upstanding
fellows, and no schoolmaster could help being proud of them. Such as
they nestle down in the heart of the schoolmaster and cause him to
know that life is good.
I was sorry not to be able to share my joy with my friend who stood
near, but that could not be. I might have used words to him, but he
would not have understood. He had never yearned over those fellows
and watched them, day by day, hoping that they might grow up to be an
honor to their school. He had never had the experience of watching
from the schoolhouse window, fervently wishing that no harm might
come to them, and that no shadows might come over their lives. He
had never known the joy of sitting up far into the night to prepare
for the coming of those boys the next day. He had never seen their
eyes sparkle in the classroom when, for them, truth became illumined.
Of course, he stood aloof, for he couldn't know. Only the
schoolmaster can ever know how those four boys became the focus of
all that wondrous beauty on that splendid morning. If I had had my
grade-book along I would have recorded their grades in behavior, for
as I looked upon those glorious chaps and heard them recount their
experiences I had a feeling of exaltation, knowing that the
activities of our school had functioned in right behavior.